


Fortunately Unfortunate Weather

by wickedlupin



Category: Tales of the Abyss
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Hurt/Comfort, asch and luke are twins, asch has the unlucky sims trait
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-11
Updated: 2020-01-11
Packaged: 2021-02-27 11:28:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,994
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22206379
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wickedlupin/pseuds/wickedlupin
Summary: Asch, Luke, and Natalia are snowed in for Christmas.  As expected, Asch is pissed.
Relationships: Asch the Bloody/Natalia Kimlasca-Lanvaldear
Comments: 9
Kudos: 15





	Fortunately Unfortunate Weather

**Author's Note:**

  * For [zakulf](https://archiveofourown.org/users/zakulf/gifts).



> This was written for @ZAKULF on twitter/tumblr, for the Tales secret santa 2019!!

Asch never very much cared for the snow. No matter how many layers he wore, it always managed to soak through to the bone. The fact that the snow was falling on _Christmas_ made no difference to him; the cold and wet was still cold and wet.  
  
Natalia and Luke felt differently.  
  
“Come on, Asch, it’s a white Christmas,” Natalia prompted for the second time as she tied her scarf in front of her.  
  
“There’s nothing magical about snow!” Asch insisted bitterly, remaining rooted on the couch with his arms crossed. “You’re both being stupid and childish. It’s just frozen water.”  
  
Natalia glared at him, pulling on her gloves rather roughly.  
  
“Suit yourself,” Luke said, wrapping his scarf tightly around his neck and mouth. “You can pout all you want, but you’ll be doing it alone.”  
  
That’s right!” Natalia threw the door wide as if to accentuate her words, and Asch scowled.  
  
“You’re letting all the cold in!”  
  
Natalia and Luke both ignored him and stomped out into the snow. Asch snuggled down further in his blanket.  
  
Maybe he was being selfish and stubborn, but he didn’t care. Every year, something seemed to go wrong. When he was twelve, the last time they’d had a white Christmas, Luke had convinced him they could both fit on a sled fashioned from a cardboard box. They did not, in fact, fit, and Asch broke his leg. When he was seventeen, he had tried to make it to Walgreens before they closed on Christmas Eve to get a gift bag for Natalia’s present. He was hit by a car while crossing the street, he spent Christmas in the hospital, and he had to give Natalia her present unwrapped. Two years ago, their family dog ran away. Last year, the heat went out. And now, they were snowed in, and Asch was left all by himself, huddled in front of the fire.  
  
He heard Natalia scream, and immediately jumped to his feet, all warmth forgotten—but outside the window, he could see Luke was only throwing snowballs at her.  
  
“Idiot,” he grumbled, and sat back down, facing the window this time.  
  
He was a little salty that Natalia had chosen to spend time with Luke instead of him. Well, ‘a little’ was definitely an understatement. After all, it was _Christmas._ The snow might have ruined their chances of driving home to see the rest of their family, but they could at least spend it together, right?  
  
Outside the window now, Luke and Natalia were building a snowman. He kind of wished he had gone out with them. Even if he was cold and wet, at least then he wouldn’t be all alone.  
  
With a sigh that was far too dramatic considering there was no one else around to hear it, Asch stood once more from the couch, left his blanket and his warmth behind, and began piling on layers to go out and brave the cold instead.  
  
He stepped out onto the porch, and from across the lawn, saw Natalia wave at him. Yeah, alright, this was worth it. He waved back, took another step forward—and slipped on a patch of ice, rolling his ankle and sending him tumbling face-first into the snow.  
  
When he resurfaced, he was already shouting profanities. His ankle was screaming in pain, and with his luck, it was broken. Another cursed Christmas. Why had he even tried?  
  
Natalia and Luke were running over to him, so he turned himself over into a more graceful seated position. He could already see Luke struggling to hold in his laughter. Asch made a mental note to punch him as soon as he could stand up and get to him.  
  
“Are you okay?” Natalia asked, slowing to a stop and crouching down beside him. “Dear me, there’s blood all over your face.”  
  
“Huh?” Asch lifted his hand to his face and felt something sticky and warm in contrast to the icy air. His nose was bleeding. Fucking fantastic.  
  
“The Fabre coin toss strikes again,” Luke boasted, referencing his theory that when they were born, their father had tossed a coin to decide which of them got all the good luck, and which of them got all the bad. Asch wasn’t particularly fond of this recurring joke.  
  
“Would you shut up with that already?! You’re probably the one cursing me!”  
  
“Let’s just go inside,” Natalia prompted, interrupting their bickering. “We need to stop the bleeding and get you cleaned up.”  
  
“Well that would be just great, if I could walk.” His tone came out harsher than he’d meant it, but he was still cold and in pain and having an altogether terrible Christmas, so he thought he was entitled to be a little bit mean.  
  
“Hey--” Luke started to intervene, but Natalia cut him off.  
  
“You can either tell me what you injured so I can help you, or you can keep being a Scrooge, and I’ll leave you out here in the snow to fend for yourself.”  
  
Asch scowled at her, but she met his eyes with equal ferocity.  
  
“I rolled my ankle when I slipped,” he volunteered after a moment of stubborn silence.  
  
“Oh dear,” A note of tenderness returned to Natalia’s voice, and Asch suddenly felt bad for being so nasty. “Luke, can you help me get him on his feet?”  
  
“Yeah.” Luke crouched down on Asch’s other side. “Come on, you big grump.”  
  
For half a second, Asch thought about refusing Luke’s help, but in the end he threw an arm around his brother’s shoulders anyway. Natalia gently took his other arm and draped it over her own shoulders, and together, they lifted him to his feet-- well, foot.  
  
They made it inside and into the bathroom with a heavy amount of fumbling and cursing. Blood was still dripping messily from Asch’s face as Luke and Natalia settled him down on the toilet. Asch pinched his nose and closed his eyes, leaning forward so his elbows supported him on his thighs.  
  
“I’m going to take off your boot,” Natalia told him. He opened his eyes to see her stooped beside his foot. Luke was nowhere in sight; it seemed he vacated the bloody bathroom the moment Asch had taken a seat.  
  
“Ogay.” His voice came out thick and congested.  
  
Natalia’s careful fingers untied and loosened his boot as far as it would go. Asch winced as she slid it off his foot, but held back another curse, mostly because it was so difficult to speak while he was pinching his nose.  
  
She caressed his ankle, gently feeling for any abnormalities in the bone or the tissue. “It’s pretty swollen,” she told him, “but I don’t think it’s broken. You might have only sprained it.”  
  
“Lucky me,” he said dryly.  
  
She smiled at him, and Asch realized he had gotten blood all over her pale blue scarf. “Has the bleeding stopped?” she asked, returning to her feet.  
  
“I think so.” He pinched up and down the bridge of his nose as if testing it. Natalia stepped over to the sink, then leaned down in front of him. Asch stared at her; their faces were so close. Had he not been covered in blood, he might have thought about kissing her.  
  
Natalia began dabbing at his face with a warm, damp towel. She worked in silence, folding the towel over every few seconds to work with a clean section of cloth.  
  
“I just want _one_ Christmas to go perfectly,” Asch mumbled. Natalia sighed and shook her head.  
  
“No Christmas is going to go _perfectly_. You just have to make the best of what you have. You keep sabotaging yourself by expecting things to go wrong, and then getting mad when they do.” When the blood was wiped away, Asch’s face way still pink from the cold. She dropped her hand from his face, but didn’t move away from him right away. “You’re not alone on Christmas,” she reminded him. “Luke and I are still here. We can have a nice, quiet evening with one another. That’s the kind of Christmas you prefer anyway, isn’t it?”  
  
Asch started to sigh, but with Natalia’s face still so close to his, he stopped his breath short. “I guess that’ll be nice, as long as the house doesn’t burn down or something.”  
  
“See, there you go again. Stop that.” She patted his cheek twice and stood up straight, returning to the sink to rinse out the bloodstained towel.  
  
Asch crossed his arms as he watched her, and finally let out the long exhale he’d needed to release. “Thank you, Natalia.”  
  
She glanced over at him and smiled. “You’re very welcome. How does your ankle feel?”  
  
“Throbbing like mad.”  
  
“We’ll need to get it up and on some ice. I’ll help you out to the couch. Can you put any weight on it?”  
  
“Suppose I should try.” He braced himself with a hand on the wall to lift himself onto his good foot, then gingerly placed the other one on the ground. It hurt like hell, but he could probably hobble into the next room well enough. “It hurts, but it’ll be fine,” he confirmed.  
  
Natalia returned to his side and slid her arm around his back to help support him. This time, without Luke there to exacerbate his bad mood, he took extra notice of her warmth. He loved the way she felt beside him. Even if she hadn’t been literally tending to his wounds, her presence alone could have healed him.  
  
She helped him settle down on the couch, stacked pillows under his foot, and tucked a blanket around him. “I’ll be right back, I’m just going to get some ice,” she said, and left him there.  
  
He was now, at least, warming up in front of the fire. Natalia had promised to spend the evening with him. Maybe she was right, and this Christmas wouldn’t be _all_ bad.  
  
When footsteps echoed back down the hall, he expected Natalia to come around the corner, but to his displeasure, Luke entered the room instead. He was carefully balancing three mugs, and Asch silently cursed him. If he had tried something like that with his luck, he would have dropped them all.  
  
“I made you some hot chocolate,” Luke said, setting all three mugs down on the coffee table before offering one to his brother. “And I brought you some pain killers, if you need them.”  
  
Luke didn’t often try to cheer him up. Suspiciously, he took the mug with both hands. The warmth penetrated his fingers and seemed to drive straight into his core. “Thank you,” he said, and Luke smiled broadly.  
  
“You’re actually thanking me?”  
  
“Don’t push it, idiot.” He lifted the mug to his lips and took a small sip of the hot liquid. It was so much richer and creamier than he had expected. There was no way this was just Swiss Miss, had Luke actually made this from scratch?  
  
“I tried to follow the recipe you always make,” Luke confirmed, rubbing the back of his head sheepishly. “It’s probably not as good as yours, though.”  
  
Asch’s competitive nature took pride in the fact that his brother was right—Luke’s hot chocolate _wasn’t_ as good as his. He kept this little ego boost for himself, though, and decided not to rub it in Luke’s face for once, in return for his kind gesture. “It’s good.” His voice was softer than usual, and he almost smiled. “Thanks, Luke.”  
  
Luke really wasn’t so bad, when he wasn’t being a brat.  
  
Natalia returned with a bag of ice, and set it carefully on Asch’s swollen ankle. Luke handed her a mug of her own as she sat down beside him. She brought her knees up onto the couch and snuggled herself under the corner of Asch’s blanket, placing her warm hand on his leg.  
  
Asch smiled, leaning into her warmth as he took another sip of his hot chocolate.


End file.
